


Review of the Torchwood Episode - Ghost Machine and How People View Television Then & Now

by shadowkat67



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Episode: s01e03 Ghost Machine, Meta, Multi, Reviews, Russell T. Davies Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-22
Updated: 2007-09-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22382746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Kudos: 1





	Review of the Torchwood Episode - Ghost Machine and How People View Television Then & Now

You know, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm watching a different _Torchwood_ than everyone else online saw last spring/winter, because I'm really not getting the negative critiques of it. Or maybe it's because I read all the negative critiques prior to seeing the episodes, so went in to the whole thing with extremely low expectations? (Unlike Doctor Who - which I went into with high expectations?) OR maybe, I've seen more crappy tv shows than most of folks have?

I did grow up in the 70's and 80's after all - and trust me, you haven't seen bad television until you've sat through a couple of episodes of The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Charlie's Angels, Three's Company, Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days, and The Brady Bunch. TV sucked beans up until the mid-80's, we are in TV's Golden Age. As Momster explained a while back in another of our endless telephone conversations - "people didn't watch tv back then (meaning the 1950's up until maybe the mid 60's) because it was entertaining so much as because it was novelty. My mother (Granny) didn't like any of the shows on, she just watched them because it was odd to have a tv set." Sort of like watching "YouTube" now, I suppose.

Also, you didn't have that many choices - just two or three networks, and everything ended at ten o'clock. When I was a kid, the tv went to static after the Tonight Show, we'd have the Star Spangeled Banner end the evening - which was around midnight and it would start up again around 6 the next morning with the early news. This was portrayed to startling effect in the film Poltergeist, which premiered on the big screens in the early 80's when I was 14. Anyone under the age of 37, probably wouldn't get that bit - since HBO and cable changed all of that around 1985.

People talk about how bad Bionic Woman, Six Million Dollar Man and BattleStar Galatica were, but they were actually not that bad in comparison to some of the other stuff on back then. And really sort of innovative and different at the time. I mean come on - have you ever sat through an episode of the Ropers? Or Joanie Loves Chiachi? Or how about the Kroft Super Hour with Dyno Girl and Electro Woman? Or better yet, Isis? And then there was Manimal, Knight Rider and Wonder Woman. There was some real crap on back then...Bionic Woman was actually sort of decent, not that I ever got to watch it at it's normal time (it was on too late and from my parents point of view, too old for me when it premiered) - I watched in reruns in the afternoons when I got home from school. Up until that point - I got the synopsis from my best friend on the way to school each morning. She'd fill me in on what happened with Jamie Sommers and Lee Majors. In retrospect her synopsis and retelling of the story was much better than the actual television program. So were my mother's synopsis and retelling of the soaps that she watched and I missed being at school. (This was before VCR's and DVD's - you miss an episode? You MISSED that episode and had to rely on someone who saw it to fill you in.)

I think today's tv audience is extreemly spoiled. They have too many choices, the ability to tape and/or rent missed episodes - even buy them on DVD and watch them repeatedly without commercials. Not to mention watch "movie theater quality" television shows on Cable without commericial interruptions and extraordinary budgets. Even HBO has changed since I was a kid. I remember when it was just a bunch of recently released movies shown over and over and over again with several stupid comedy spots and an occassional made for HBO film or theater presentation - I saw several filmed theater presentations on HBO that were quite good. It was worth it for that alone. Don't see that much any more though.

At any rate - I saw tonight's episode of **Torchwood** on BBC America entitled The Ghost Machine and it was one of the most innovative things I've seen in a long time. The actors - I really appreciate on the series - particularly the female actresses, who aren't skinny, right off the fashion mag babes. But actually look like ordinary women, with full figures, bad skin, bad hair days, and frumpy outfits. Very comforting. The men are actually prettier here than the women, nice change of pace that. But in Torchwood, they've cast a normal looking guy/bloke as Gwen, the main character's boyfriend. He's not only a nice contrast to John Barrowman's handsome Captain Jack, but he's exactly who I'd envision with Gwen. The story gripped me from the outset - it was on the surface about a machine that can not only show you what happened in a space you are standing but allow you to feel exactly what those people felt. That was the top layer, it had a lot of layers. More than most shows I've seen appear to, including the over-hyped Doctor Who. The machine also shows the future. What it shows, Captain Jack explains is ghosts, but not ghosts as you and I think of them, but rather the emotional residue that time leaves behind, or another more intriguing view, which by the way intersects with the brilliant episode I saw of Doctor Who entitled Blink - time is continuous and circular, the past, present and future are happening simultaneously around us. We are in the room with the ghosts of the past and the ghosts of the future, we just aren't aware of them. I've seen the concept explored before of course, just not quite in this way. The last time I saw it explored was in the Star Trek Next Generation finale - All Good Things, when Picard is experiencing many different times at once. What I like about Torchwood is it seems less interested in scaring the pants off me, a problem I have with a lot of sci-fi, and more interested in exploring character and theme. Doctor Who sometimes gets a bit too interested in the horrific monster of the week for my taste - that was my one quibble about Blink - it was yet another monster trying to hurt the Doctor and steal the Tardis, that storyline gets a tad tarnished after a bit.

There's of course a parallel storyline going on in the episode as well, the emotional one - it is about guilt. How we are haunted by our guilt. And the ghost of our past continue to haunt and live with us. Gwen experiences it first - when she accidently turns on the device, discovering a poor lost boy - who leaves one family for another one, much as Gwen herself has left one family for another and isn't quite sure of the fit. She finds the old man the boy became and he says that his new family was quite wonderful and worked out in the end. Gwen clearly is haunted by her choices. Is she doing the right thing joining Torchwood? Could she lose what she loves because of it? Then there's Owen, who doesn't appear to care about anything and seems to be a bit of a user, until he inadvertently is frust back in time by the device and witnesses the murder and rape of a woman in alley. Struck with guilt for not being able to save her and still remembering her fear - he too searchs out the survivor of the affair and finds an old paranoid and somewhat suicidal man - so haunted by what he'd done that he can barely function. But the show doesn't stop there - it asks about the future as well, which Captain Jack says is open that there are multiple versions. When Gwen sees it, they attempt to stop what she sees, only to bring it about. Jack states the device isn't for them - if they have the ability to see the future, they will feel compelled to change or alter it, causing only problems. This is true, I think. When we are told what might happen, or will happen, we inadvertently hijack it, hurt it through our meddling. There are some things that we are not meant to know.

The US critics, who have mostly praised Torchwood, compare it to the X-Files. I actually prefer it to the X-Files - which took itself too seriously at times and was too scarey, focusing more on the horror and the monsterous than on the human emotion. I did like several stand-alone episodes, but grew tired of the alien conspiracy plot fairly quickly. Torchwood's alien sub-plot is more innovative in my opinion and more optimistic. Of course I'm only three episodes in.

Spent most of tonight, while watching the series, perplexed by the online critiques of it. Okay, thought I, are we watching the same show here? Because this is actually a whole lot better than I was expecting it to be or lead to believe. Maybe there's something to be said for coming into it with LOW expectations?? From the reviews I read online I expected the acting to be wooden or way over the top, to see cardboard sets, lots of cheesy makeup, stilted dialogue, wooden direction, and cliche ridden plots. So far the only off-kilter acting I've seen is from Barrowman, who like Tennant comes across as initially uncomfortable in the role...but also like Tennant Barrowman has grown on me and is getting better with each passing episode. So it's not that obvious or really a problem nor is it any different than the problem I had with Doctor Who. Granted the production quality is not up to say HEROES, BSG or Prime Suspect's standards, but Buffy didn't have that quality either nor did Angel - both, if you think about it, were incredibly cheesy at times - since like Torchwood, they had about a quarter or maybe an eighth of those shows budgets. So, I did not expect that. I expected something below Buffy standards, and it is actually better than Buffy and Star Trek when it comes to special effects and production values. Also a tad better than Doctor Who come to think of it. I'm pleasantly surprised by the whole thing.


End file.
